A number of years ago 3M Company introduced its "Post-it" (trademark of 3M Company) product which consists of a pad of individual pieces of paper each having a band of low tack pressure sensitive adhesive along one edge. Basically, the pack is held together by the adhesive and the user simply peels off each one of the pieces of paper as they are needed. The low tack adhesive can then be attached to a document by contact and by pressure from the attacher's thumb. The pieces of paper can be written upon if desired. They can also be readily removed without damaging the document. Often these pieces of paper or flags are attached to the edges of sheets of paper which are in a stack with other sheets of paper (and may be bound together as are the pages of a book or magazine) and with all or part of the non-adhesive portion of the flag extending outwardly from the stack of sheets of paper so that they can call attention to the need to refer to the particular sheet of paper.
More recently, a similar product has been introduced to the market, also by 3M Company, which utilizes sufficiently transparent plastic tape so that one can read material through the tape when it is attached over the material rather than paper, but which, like the paper flags, has a low tack adhesive along one of its edges. The surfaces of the plastic tape segments may be roughened so as to provide the ability to write on them. Furthermore, relatively brightly colored stripes have been provided on the portions of the flags which do not have an adhesive on them so that they are more readily visible when they stick out from stacked papers.
Note that the commercial "Post-it" type flags are dispensed from dispensers wherein the adhesive on a first of the flags is attached to the non-adhesive side of the next of the flags in a manner which requires considerable assembly. Furthermore, the most readily available size of packets of the prior art "Post-it" tape flags contain only fifty such tags, perhaps because of difficulty in assembling larger packages utilizing the complicated dispensing system.
Both of the products discussed above consist of a plurality of individual tape segments attached to one another. In the case of the paper flags they are simply attached to one another with the adhesive band for each successive tape segment being attached to the non-adhesive covered side of the next segment and with the adhesive bands being in alignment with one another so as to provide a pad of removable labelling segments. In the case of the transparent plastic flags they are also stuck to one another and are provided in a dispenser which dispenses one of the flags at a time, each tape as it is removed from the dispenser pulling the next tape partially out of the dispenser.
It would be advantageous if, particularly in the case of the plastic flags, one could provide a product which could be sold in roll form and from which individual flags could be cut off and used in the manner described above. This would allow the use of relatively inexpensive dispensers, much like those utilized by 3M Company to market its "Scotch" (trademark of 3M Company) brand plastic tape.
While some systems do exist for allowing segments of tape of a desired length to be torn off of a larger roll of the tape, such are not readily adapted to cut off and deliver flags of the nature discussed above. For example, Dashow, U.S. Pat. No. 4,161,249, discloses a web product, for example an adhesive product, on which is provided markings at predetermined locations to aid a user in dispensing the product. The product is wound into a roll and a marker is secured to the web along at least one predetermined location extending transversely across the width of the web. The web can be unwound to expose the marker which signifies to a user that a predetermined portion of the length of the web has been unwound. Other patents of interest include U.S. Pat. No. 2,170,147 of Lane, issued Aug. 22, 1939; U.S. Pat. No. 2,780,352 of Schroeder, issued Feb. 5, 1957; U.S. Pat. No. 2,818,349 of Bergstedt, issued Dec. 31, 1957; U.S. Pat. No. 3,648,835 of Yucel, issued Mar. 14, 1972 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,562,102 of Rabuse, issued Dec. 31, 1985.
It should be noted that none of the above patents contemplate use of adhesive only along portions of the tape or any correlation of the location of bands of adhesive with indicator stripes.
The present invention is directed to providing a tape product from which flags can be torn off and used as described above.